Today is the first Sunday of the month. To those of you who aren’t Mormon, it’s probably a Sunday like any other. To Mormons, it’s Fast Sunday. This means two things: we fast (thus the name) and our usual sacrament meeting is a testimony meeting.

The fasting is pretty easy to explain, especially since I’ll let mormon.org do it for me (Score one for lazy blogging!):

Once a month, God asks us to fast, or forego food and water for two meals. If there are issues with health or age (such as the very young) fasting can be modified to fit individual circumstances. But fasting without prayer, some say, is just going hungry. We pick a specific need or question we have and pray for help while we fast. … The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sets aside the first Sunday of every month as a time when members are asked to fast. We are encouraged to make a fast offering on these days, which is a monetary donation (at least equal to the value of the two meals) that goes to help the poor who need food or shelter.

During the testimony meeting, members who feel prompted to do so share their testimony with the other congregation members.

So there’s some Mormon background for what’s really a simple anecdote. What can I say? I like to be thorough. I also have some concern for a few of you out there who claim your only exposure to Mormonism comes from watching Big Love. This does not count as exposure to Mormonism. Modern-day polygamists are not Mormons. Ahem. Sorry. Had to get that out of my system.

As a general rule, the first hour of church (before the kids go to their classes) is more an endurance challenge than a faith-promoting experience. I spend most of the time shushing one kid, stuffing goldfish into the gaping maw of another, passing around crayons, and mediating fights over Hot Wheels.

So when Car leaned over during testimony meeting and said, “Little G says he wants to go pee in the potty,” I didn’t think twice about whisking him off to the bathroom. Is he potty-trained? Heavens, no. Not even close. But if he expresses interest, I’ll get that boy to a potty and I’ll party like it’s 1999 if even a drop of pee makes it into the toilet. Which is what happened this afternoon, in the middle of church. I clapped my hands, told him how proud I was, and made the biggest fuss I could possibly make in a church bathroom.

We went back to our seats, Little G filled with pride over his accomplishment. So proud, in fact, that he had to tell daddy about it.

Right then.

In the chapel.

During a lull in the testimony meeting.

Very loudly.

“DADDY, I PEE IN THE POTTY! I PEE IN THE POTTY, DADDY! I GO PEE! I PEE IN THE POTTY!”

In god’s bathroom
Everybody pees
All god’s potty-trained children
All Things Bright and Potty-Trained
And so god said, let there be potty training!
And so it came to pass that there was potty training
And God saw that it was good
And on the 768th day, there was potty training.
And God said, Let there be urine.
Let there be wee!
And there was wee. And it was good.
Yea, though I walk thru the valley of toddlerdom, I shall fear no potty.
In the beginning, there were diapers.
And thou shalt love thy potty with all thine heart
There shall be no potty before me!
No, there shall ALWAYS be a potty before thee!
Honor thy mother & thy potty
Thou shalt not lie down in diapers
In feast & in famine, in dry diapers & in wet
Seven fat cows, seven thin cows, seven wet diapers, seven potty pees
And thou shalt keep the potty holy

Y’all remember how we read about space every night, right? Currently we’re reading The Atlas of the Universe, which Big G checked out from the library. What, doesn’t your kid head straight for the kids’ reference section at the library?

For your edification, I’d like to share some moments from tonight’s story time.

Car: Venus is the hottest planet…blah blah blah…would melt there like butter.Me: Wait, what would melt like butter?Car: A bar of solid lead.Me: Oh. I thought maybe they said a human being.Car: Thank you so much for that visual.Me: Hee!Big G: Mom, you would die on Venus.

A little bit later…

Car: Jupiter is bigger…blah blah blah…deep atmosphere….blah blah blah…small moons.Me: So Jupiter is the biggest planet?Car:As I just read: “Jupiter is bigger and more massive than all the other planets put together.”Me: Shut up. I have ADD.

A little bit later…

Car: The farthest planet from the sun is Neptune. It is almost the same size as Uranus.Me: BWAHAHAHAHAH!Car: *glares at me* Someone is a little punchy tonight.

A little bit later…

Car: The Solar System…blah blah blah…created when a cloud of gas and dust called a nebula started to shrink under its own gravity.Me: There was shrinkage!Car: *glares at me*

I love story time.

*This post brought to you by the letters A, D, and D.
**Yes, I know it doesn’t make sense to have D twice. Shut up.
***Fritter, anyone?

We see some interesting prescriptions at the pharmacy—from the illegible (a local pediatrician who tends to write for only two different medications, which fortunately makes his indecipherable scrawls predictable) to the downright bizarre (Clomid for men).

However, sometimes even the most experienced pharmacy (by which, of course, I mean my pharmacy) is at a loss.

Today a customer sent a prescription in through the drive-thru and said she’d send someone to pick it up later. Here’s the prescription she sent in:

Sadly, we were fresh out of 10W-40.

Moral of the story: if you have multiple papers in your car, you might want to double-check what you’re sending in the tube. Just a thought.

First of all, I have to say y’all are the best readers ever. Some people might say I’m crazy, but you guys? You just make me feel all kinds of normal with my matching lids and the such.

Second, Car feels I should tell you that when we had our little talk about sippy cup lids, I made him wash a lid because he was, at that very moment, about to use a lid that didn’t match.

Anyway, it recently became apparent that Little G needed a haircut. When I say recently, I mean he’s needed a haircut for over a month.

Given the horrors that accompany cutting Big G’s hair, I wanted to pay someone to cut Little G’s hair. Alas, that didn’t work out, and the responsibility fell to me. Fortunately, several factors worked in my favor:

Little G had a good nap.

We have a portable DVD player.

I bought a 1 lb. bag of M&Ms.

Little G is not afraid of the hair clippers.

That’s right, folks. It was time for a shearing. We popped a Diego DVD in the portable DVD player, stuffed the kid full of M&Ms, sat him in Car’s lap, and went to town.

Overall, I think it was a roaring success.

Before

After

Now the biggest problem? His gargantuan noggin. I thought all the hair was making it look big, but that kid’s got a huge head, and cutting his hair made it look even bigger.

I’m not kidding. It’s like an orange on a toothpick!

*The best things about using this clip:

We did the haircut on S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y…NIGHT!

About a week ago, Car said, “This kid almost looks like he could be one of the Bay City Rollers.” I said, “Like you know what the Bay City Rollers looked like.” He said, “I know what they looked like! I had one of their albums.”

Ha! I kid. See, that’s funny, because the common misconception is that all people with OCD wash their hands constantly. But that’s irrelevant, because I’m not OCD.

We have two basic types of sippy cups in our house: Lightning McQueen and Toy Story. Like So:

The Lightning McQueen cups came with blue and red lids. The Toy Story cups came with green lids. Last week I grabbed the last clean cup out of the cupboard—a Toy Story cup. Then I grabbed the last lid.

It was red.

I did what any perfectly sane non-OCD person would do.

I washed a green lid.

What? That’s perfectly normal. The green lids go with the Toy Story cups. Do you see any green in the Lightning McQueen cups? I think not! It’s not OCD. It’s a keen eye for coordination!

Shut up. It’s not like I would’ve panicked if I had to use a red lid. I believe we could characterize it as “moderately disturbed.”